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First of all... all of this is my opinion, I might forget to mention that here and there, so I'm taking the effort to state it first.

I originally was going to avoid this topic, but I keep seeing it near the top of the page when I come here, it's been getting on my nerves. Discussions like these I find to be pointless, since most of the time what is considered to be a true middle ground (appealing to both genders) is utterly boring! (of course that's just my opinion)

First we must ask the question, what is a "game for women?"

It's been brought up, but not a single person clearly stated what would a game for women entail. Would it be large amount of drama and relationships like a soap opera? Would there be a lot of clothes customization like how rpgs have? (I really like that kinda feature, few games have that). But really, what do women really want in games? Have they voiced their preference enough that it became well known? I'm certainly not aware of anything like that.

Men and Women have different types of interests. I personally believe this is mostly biological, the rest are the minorities for whatever reason. Which brings up another question. Why should any company invest most of their profit to cater to the minorities? The way I see it, it's like a fashion company or a jewelry making company creating products primarily for the male market. This does not mean that there shouldn't be anything for the male audience that like fashion and clothes, but they are the minority. The problem is: Who is buying more of the clothes? Who is buying more of the jewelry? It's women. But why is it women and not men? Simple, most men are not as interested in those kind of things when compared to women. It just doesn't make sense to spend hard earned profit on something that will bring you less profit that you would otherwise make. So it's NOT about "forgetting" the female audience, it's just that females are just not that interested in gaming when compared to males. This is the reason there are so few games which are considered to be for girls. There was some statistic here that there were something like 40% female and 60% male gamers. But I find those numbers to be a little skewed to a specific genre of games.

I have personally met a few women and teenage girls that do play games, and when I say few, I really mean just a few. What were the other teen girls doing? Talking about relationships, clothes, some TV show they've watched which is mostly catered to the female audience (I'm not making this up, I've seen this first hand). And what were the teen guys doing? Talking about sports, games, silly random things guys tend to do, some TV show they've watched which is mostly catered to the male audience..... I forgot where I was going with this... sorry about that lol.

Now let me just nitpick on something that was said here somewhere, or at least implied unintentionally. Just because a game has a large male audience, does that automatically mean that the game cannot be enjoyed by women? I personally find an opinion like that to be ridiculous. Does this mean that in order for a game to be a game for women, the majority of the sales must be from female buyers? Just a question I thought I'd throw out there.

I think the problem is because people pay way too much attention to which target the games are aiming for. I don't hesitate to tell people that I enjoys The Sim 3, which to some people are game that cater to female. I don't care what people's opinion about the game I'm playing as long as I enjoy it. Being an minority doesn't make the game less interesting to me anyway.

There's this strange fact about "the sims", and that's that while the predominance of female players that enjoy it is absolutely palpable, it seems that the developers are going to a complete different direction from what those players actually want.

You just need to take a look at the modding community and what's the most popular trend among them. And I think it's more than evident what kind of direction they are taking. For the most part they try to improve realism, and to transform the sims in models you can see in fashion magazines. Premade sims even if males show large amount of make up, extremely fashionable clothes, awesome hairstyles and so on.

And what do the developers give you instead? Cartoons! Freaking Cartoons!
What do you think it's more appealing to the female population? Cartoons or Soap operas?

There are a lot of people that never touched the sims 3 because they can't stand the pudding faces. And I'm one of them.

Game developers are usually the guys growing up being ridiculed as the "man who can't get a date" Or dissed by women as "nerds, geeks and losers"

When they become developers, their minds are all shaped to a specific vision that probably aren't female centric. Or even realize the fact women play games. :P

It is changing with the current generation (I met a 12 years old cutie girl who decided to play a game of smash brothers with me at a Game store when I was in Boston). In the 90s where I grew up? Women wouldn't be caught dead with a game controller, and all of us guys hide our video games (and pornz) when a girl come visit, finding a game console in your bedroom gave you much stigma as sexting your manhood to the cheerleader squad.

So it is up to girls in this generation tell the male dev what they want...or become developers themselves.

I think thread OP is asking if there is any high-budget games that are friendlier to female gamers. Sadly there aren't any besides some rather awful Barbie and Bratz games mostly in PS1/PS2 era. It did sucks to be a female gamer though.

Interestingly Sword Girls(online trading card game) is popular to female gamers as well to male ones. In some places even outnumber the male ones(maybe due to strong anime/manga influence in them). My own theory is that's one of few best things for them can have. I also suspect some of the female fans are developing bishounen or shouta version of the game just they did not announce their work yet.

The same lara that they inserted into playboy? boy that sure went well did it?
Don't bother changing her image. There's little you can do.
Instead MAKE A NEW IP with this new target audience in mind.
Make a new heroine. Make a new story.

The same lara that they inserted into playboy? boy that sure went well did it?
Don't bother changing her image. There's little you can do.
Instead MAKE A NEW IP with this new target audience in mind.
Make a new heroine. Make a new story.

Changing Lara at this point is like changing Dante

It's not going to work and you are only going to annoy people.

..

Nah, they just didn't make it dark and edgy enough, with Shakespearean dialogues.

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"The blood makes us human... Makes us more than human... Makes us human no more..."

The Tomb Raider reboot sold really well, but it was just so damn expensive, and the publisher had unrealistic expectations, that even with 3.4 million copies sold it still didn't cross the finish line.

Amen to that video. Stop it... New Lara croft is still a example of this...stop it.

It isn't going to stop, it will never stop, forget gaming, "Sex Sells" has existed in media since the first artist realized he could draw pictures of naked women and they would sell. "Sex sells" exists in all forms of media; books, movies, tv, even music. So I would hardly say the objectification of women is the reason for lack of women in gaming

Furthermore, you don't develop an industry by suppressing the ideas of others, you do it by coming out with even better ideas. I have absolutely no idea what women want from gaming, I'm not a woman, but if women have an interest, start making suggestions or better yet, get into the industry.

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So people understand that I do not take these discussions seriously, its all good fun.

The same lara that they inserted into playboy? boy that sure went well did it?
Don't bother changing her image. There's little you can do.
Instead MAKE A NEW IP with this new target audience in mind.
Make a new heroine. Make a new story.

Changing Lara at this point is like changing Dante

It's not going to work and you are only going to annoy people.

..

Nobody wants to make a new IP because they're terrified it won't do well. That's why we have so many sequels and spin-offs and gaiden games.

The game industry needs to dig its head out of its ass, stop being so spec-obsessed, stop with the enormously and unnecessarily bloated budgets, stop with hilariously unrealistic sales expectations and try to deliver a fun, engaging experience to the player.

From Software did it with Dark Souls, which sold 2 million copies and was fantastically profitable. Tomb Raider did not, which sold 3.4 million copies and was considered a failure.